London, October 2. We now have before us the official report on 
the national revenues for the past year, half-year and quarter 
(according to Gladstone’s innovations the English financial year 
ends for both expenditure and revenue on September 30).* On the 
one hand it demonstrates the elasticity of English resources, on the 
other that the probabilities calculus is not the forte of English 
financiers. With regard to the past financial year the net surplus 
amounts to £8,344,781, with regard to the past half-year to 
£2,929,699, and to the past quarter £1,924,124. The significance 
of these figures is transformed at once if one takes into 
consideration on the one hand the increase in taxation which has 
taken place under Gladstone and Lewis and on the other the 
disproportion between the tax increases as calculated and as 
realised. This is incontrovertibly revealed as soon as we look into 
details. In the customs we find an increase of £1,290,787 for the 
year, of £608,444 for the half-year, and of £364,423 for the 
quarter. This is due entirely to the new taxes on tea, sugar and 
coffee. It needs the bourgeois optimism of The Daily News to use 
this statistical premise to deduce that prosperity within the 
working classes has increased. As we know, Gladstone suspended 
the tax reductions on tea and sugar which the House of Commons 
had decreed at his suggestion in 1854. His successor Lewis added 
3 shillings per cwt. on sugar, which according to his estimate was 
to bring in £1,200,000 in taxes; 3d. per pound of tea, which 
according to his calculations was to add £750,000 to the customs; 
and finally 1d. per pound of coffee, which should be equivalent to 

* The report was published in The Times, No. 22173, October 1, 1855.— Ed. 

The Official Financial Report 555 

a financial surplus of £150,000. The total surplus revenue from 
the customs for the last quarter, however, only amounts to 
£364,423, that is far less than even half of the additional return 
expected from the increased tax on sugar alone. From the taxation 
lists we see that the consumption. of coffee has fallen by almost 2 
per cent as against 1853. The customs revenue from wine and 
tobacco has fallen significantly. 

In England the excise is regarded as the barometer of the 
“comforts”? the lower classes of the people enjoy. Here we find a 
reduction of £266,006 in the best quarter, although Sir George 
Cornewall Lewis’ new tax on distilled liquors was in full operation 
in Scotland and Ireland. He counted on receiving an increase of 
£1,000,000 from his additional tax. Instead of this he has lost 
£266,006 over the quarter. As for the stamp-duty, there is an 
increase over the year of £100,472 but a loss over the half-year of 
£48,402 and for the last quarter a loss of £103,344. This is all the 
more striking when one considers that Gladstone’s newly intro- 
duced inheritance tax is in full operation. In the postal revenue, 
which belongs to this category (of stamp revenues), we find a 
deficit of £206,819 over the year, of £175,976 over the half-year 
and of £81,243 for the last quarter. The landed property tax 
shows an increase of £6,484,147 for the year, £2,195,124 for the 
half-year and £1,993,590 for the quarter. But we must not forget 
that Gladstone doubled the former rate of taxation and expected 
this to yield an increase of £6'/2 million, while Sir George 
Cornewall Lewis moreover passed a new additional tax of 
twopence in the pound, from which he anticipated another tax 
increase of £4,000,000. Thus with regard to the revenue from 
landed property the increase in revenue has in no way corres- 
ponded to the increase in taxation, either. 

The swindles and the probable future of the Crédit Foncier and 
the Crédit mobilier * and other Bonapartist creations in banking 
and in bankruptcy constantly occupy the public here. In_ this 
connection one may recall that Emile Péreire and other directors 
of these institutions were originally Saint Simonists. These gentle- 
men always expected the salvation of the world from the banks, 
perhaps also from bankruptcy. In any case they have found their 
own salvation therein. In so far as one abstracts from the great 
general ideas of the master, St. Simonism has been realised under 
Bonaparte in the only form in which it was possible. What more 
could one want! Péreire is Bonaparte’s chief financial humbug and 

-? Marx uses the English word.— Ed. 

M. Michel Chevalier is one of his editors-in-chief, he is the 
principal economist of the Journal des Débats. Habent sua fata 
libelli. But great ideas too have their “fata”’.